Grey's Anatomy Recap: Mixed Doubles

What if, instead of Laverne and Shirley, J.R. and Sue Ellen, and Benson and Stabler, it had been Laverne and Stabler, J.R. and Shirley, and Benson and Sue Ellen? Wouldn’t that have been awesome? In this week’s Grey’s Anatomy, Richard seemed to think so, so he shook up all of Grey Sloan by switching the resident/attending pairings. The result? Read on…

RICHARD SHOOK THINGS UP | As the Kevin McKidd-directed “Odd Man Out” began, Richard took a look at Grey Sloan’s comfortable teammates and decided that they were stagnating. So he held a “resident scramble” that wound up pairing Meredith with Jo, Arizona with Ben and Andrew, Penny with Amelia, and Stephanie with the puppies in peds. (Don’t ask.) We also learned from Callie that Sgt. Carson was doing well after last week’s insane surgery, but Meredith was ignoring Will’s calls — and also not telling Maggie that she had a hot military doctor chasing her. In surgery, Callie suggested that maybe Mer never returned Will’s calls because she didn’t hear the phone ringing. “Your ringer needs to be turned on,” Torres cracked naughtily. “You’ve been on vibrate for too long!”

JO CALLED OUT MEREDITH | As you’d expect, Jo’s pairing with Mer went badly. In fact, it went so badly that, when Wilson wrongly predicted what the attending would want to her do next, Grey said the four most hurtful words that she possibly could: “You’re just not Blake.” (And you KNOW Mer is not a fan of yours when she’d rather be stuck with the doctor that everyone blames for Derek’s death than you!) Rather than let it drop, Jo — spurred on by Stephanie, who told her to do something about Grey or stop bitching about her — confronted Mer. “I get it,” Wilson said. “You don’t like me.” But she was in Alex’s life, and she had every intention of staying there. So it would be really swell, she told Mer, if Grey could treat her with a modicum of respect and detangle herself from their relationship. “Call your damn army guy back and get your own boyfriend!” Jo dared to add. Later, Mer complained to Callie and Maggie about Jo but insisted that she liked her. “Do you?!?” asked Maggie, incredulous.

APRIL KEPT HER SECRET | While Jackson confided in Alex that he was secretly dating, April continued dragging her feet about informing her ex that she’s (12 weeks) pregnant. At least, she could get the baby tested to make sure it’s okay, Arizona argued. But nope. “The baby’s not getting tested… because my baby will be fine,” Kepner insisted-slash-hoped. (And this baby does have to be fine, right? Shonda couldn’t do that to Kepner — and us! — twice. Could she?) Later, Arizona argued that, if April trusted her, she had to let Robbins do everything that she could to make sure that Kepner didn’t again go through what she went through last time.

ARIZONA PULLED A HERMAN | On the case-of-the-week front, Casey Wilson (continuing the Year of Penny, if only in my mind) checked in as Courtney, an accountant expecting quadruplets… though, when Ben performed an ultrasound on the mom-to-be, he could only find three babies. “He’s in here somewhere,” Arizona assured the expectant couple, then discovered that — uh-oh — baby No. 4 had moved down, meaning that Courtney was in labor. Robbins could try to stop it, but stopping labor was like trying to stop a boulder that’s started rolling, she explained. Though Ben’s tax questions (funnily) relaxed the patient, one of the babies still tried to make its debut ahead of schedule. So Arizona decided to roll the dice and deliver that child but leave the rest of them inside Courtney. Anticipating Bailey’s disapproval, Robbins acknowledged that it was a judgment call, but “your judgment is not better here.” Mind you, all Bailey was going to say was, “Good luck.” Ultimately, Arizona pulled it off. “No one else could have done what you did,” Alex marveled.

AMELIA MADE PEACE WITH PENNY (KINDA) | After scary-movie legend Lance Henriksen was admitted as Griffin, Amelia and Nathan were explaining his dire condition to his wife, Lena (Falcon Crest alumna Jamie Rose), only to learn that she was his longtime girlfriend, and his wife was actually Gayle, played by EGOT winner Rita Moreno. And, at the risk of making the understatement of the decade, the missus was a lot less worried about the patient than the mistress. Informed that Griffin had undergone both brain and heart surgeries, Gayle surmised hopefully, “So he’s almost dead.” While Amelia lashed out at Penny — if Blake had to be on Shepherd’s service, she wasn’t so much as to touch the patient — Nathan suggested to Gayle that maybe Griffin would never wake up. Of course, right on cue, he did wake up, and when he did, he didn’t remember Lena but called out for “Bugs” — aka Gayle. Subsequently, he was shocked to learn that he had taken up with another woman. Between check-ups on Griffin, Nathan asked Amelia what was her problem with Penny, then, unsatisfied with her answer (which sounded a lot like Owen’s reason for hating him), he encouraged Blake to step in when the patient needed an emergency procedure. Afterwards, Griffin needed more surgery, which prompted Gayle to admit, “I just wanna have the chance to love him again.” Amelia wanted Stephanie to join her in the OR, but since there wasn’t time, she had to take Penny. When Griffin died on the table, Blake couldn’t help but ask, “Was it what I [did]?” It wasn’t, however. Amelia couldn’t deny, “You were perfect.”

JACKSON LEARNED APRIL’S EXPECTING | As the hour drew to a close, Bailey informed Ben that, off his helpfulness with Courtney, Arizona had requested him on her service for the foreseeable future — oh, and Miranda had hired Courtney as their new accountant. After Amelia admitted to Owen that Penny had impressed the living daylights out of her as “a natural neurosurgeon,” he sensed how emotionally spent she was and, instead of taking her on their “first date” dinner, ushered her to peds to play with the puppies. Alex took a turn encouraging April to disclose her pregnancy to Jackson, after which she sought out her former husband… only to find Arizona spilling the beans to him! Mer apologized to Jo for squashing her like a bug. And, once Grey had explained about Alex’s heartbreaking track record with women, she added, “I am rooting for you to stick.” Finally, just as Mer was finally thinking of returning Will’s calls, she found him on the bench next to her outside the hospital waiting to ask her out. “Looking at my very nice face makes it hard to say no,” he suggested. So “would you like to go out with me?”

Could you believe Arizona went behind April’s back to tell Jackson she was pregnant? Was she right to? And if Will is just a get-back-on-the-horse flirtation for Mer, wouldn’t you like to have Callie trade Penny for him? Hit the comments!